SAPCA – the Sports and Play Construction Association – may begin to offer individual membership for the first time as it bids to extend its educational programme.

Talking at the SAPCA Conference & Annual Dinner 2016 in Warwickshire, the organisation’s chief executive Chris Trickey told delegates that the board was “taking very seriously” the idea of creating a “new section of membership based around individual members”.

“There will be a consultation coming out in a couple of weeks,” said Trickey. “We’d like to get everyone’s views on this, but in essence what we want to do is as well as a corporate membership, we want to refine that and to have almost in parallel an individual membership structure that really recognises the expertise and professional standing and knowledge of the experts in our industry.”

Trickey said that he wanted to link individual memberships with SAPCA’s educational programme to create a “much wider range of training seminars to share the knowledge over the coming years”.

“There’s a lot of detail to work out,” he said. “It will have fantastic advantages, not least with helping us connect very directly with individuals across the industry.”

The SAPCA chief also used the platform as an opportunity to hint at changes to the organisation’s membership fee levy structure.

“We’re three years into our three year plan to get a better balance. The board will this year be looking at how we’ll go from here. In essence, there’s a view that the levy system created in the very beginning when SAPCA was formed – ideally we’ll get rid of that,” said Trickey.

“We’ll see where it takes us – it may be that in the end we’ll have some variation based on the size [of the company] rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.”

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